Posts falsely link former US president to Indonesian girl's murder
- Published on February 23, 2026 at 07:28
- 3 min read
- By Sammy HEUNG, AFP Hong Kong, AFP Indonesia
After files released by the US government on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein exposed his ties to the rich and powerful around the world, social media posts falsely claimed a girl photographed with Barack Obama was later found murdered. The posts juxtapose a picture of the former president and his niece with a violent image of a different girl who was killed by a man in Indonesia in 2015.
Warning: graphic images
"This image was not created by artificial intelligence. Obama, George Clooney, and a 9-year-old girl. The girl is dead!" reads the simplified Chinese caption of two images shared in an X post from February 2, 2026.
The first image shows Obama, actor George Clooney and a child sitting in a boat. The other is a collage of a photo of Obama hugging a child alongside an image of a dead girl who has had her limbs bound and her mouth taped shut.
The second image was also used in a similar X post shared on February 4, and part of its simplified Chinese caption reads: "No one in the Epstein case has faced legal punishment!"
Content warning
The images were shared in similar X posts after the US Justice Department released millions of documents from its investigation into Epstein, who died in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking underage girls (archived link).
Previous releases have shed light on the wealthy financier's ties to leading business executives, celebrities, academics and politicians.
The mere mention of someone's name in the files does not, in itself, imply any wrongdoing by that person.
But the documents made public show at the very least connections between Epstein or his circle and certain public figures who have often downplayed -- or even denied -- the existence of such ties.
While several files in the cache released in January 2026 mention Obama, many are news articles about the former president.
Clooney's name was brought up in passing in a number of email exchanges between Epstein and his acquaintances.
The circulating images have been publicly available for years before the release of the Epstein files, and they have been misrepresented in the false posts.
A reverse image search on Google shows the photo of Obama and Clooney on a boat was captured in June 2019, when the former US president and his family visited the actor's mansion in northern Italy's Lake Como region.
A similar photo can be found on Shutterstock (archived link).
AFP has previously debunked claims the photo suggests improper conduct by Obama.
Matteo Bazzi, a photographer for the Italian news agency ANSA, previously told AFP that he took the photos from that angle and did not find anything suspicious occurring on the boat.
Other photos and footage taken from other angles show the boat included other passengers, such as Clooney's wife Amal (archived here and here).
Indonesia murder case
A keyword search on Google found that the photo of Obama hugging a child was taken on December 4, 2015 by the White House's official photographer Pete Souza, who posted it on his personal blog (archived link).
The photo was cropped and mirrored in the false posts.
"The President snuggles with his niece Savita Ng after his sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, and her family dropped by the Oval Office," reads the photo's caption.
AFP reached out to the girl's family for comment but did not receive a response at the time of publication.
Another reverse image search on Google found the girl whose mouth was taped shut was Putri Nur Fauziah, a nine-year-old Indonesian girl whose body was found in October 2015, two months before the Oval Office photo was taken.
The Jakarta police chief inspector at the time said the suspect, a man named Agus Darmawan, had admitted that he raped and murdered Putri while under the influence of crystal methamphetamine (archived link).
According to local media reports, the perpetrator was sentenced to death in 2016, and his legal appeal was denied by the Supreme Court in 2017 (archived here and here).
Indonesia's Ministry of Communications and Digital Affairs has previously debunked false claims that used the same image now circulating online (archived link).
Other fact-check organisations have reported on the misused photos.
AFP has fact-checked other misinformation stemming from the Epstein files.
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